JOURNAL #6

JOURNAL#6
3/3/22

In my classes teaching art so far, I've noticed how much the students have been engaged with social justice issues on multiple levels.  Many of my students were immigrants themselves or children of immigrants.  In the article #thefutureisnow:A Model for Civically Engaged Art Education, Rachel Dendler, Sara Scott Sheilds and Dannielle Henn (2020) 

I was excited that they addressed a way that students engage with social justice that I saw in my classrooms.  Cosplay and re-storying was a popular way that students addressed the lack of representation in pop culture.  At the time, my own lesson plans didn't engage this inclusion directly, but my projects allowed for whatever subject matter they choose, and they choose restorying often.  

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Coming from a household where one of my parents immigrated here as a little girl with her family, there wasn't a lot of support for ESL or pop-culture representation (if any.)  For my mother, you fit in by assimilating into American culture, which included ignoring your own story and culture from which you came.  When I read this article and about these modern ways to engage in various types of social justice, it made me think if this existed when my mother and aunts and uncles were little, I like to think that they would have engaged with this.  It would have given them way to write about and see themselves in the larger American story. 

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Representation is a powerful tool- not just for those who identify with the characters, but also for other children and American families.  It changes the collective view.  I think this representation and visual communication has extreme and generational power.  I would say that visual art in its relation to participation in social justice issues is paramount to dialog and change.  Visual art's power lies in its readability across language, cultures and emotions.  It asks that you experience it first and foremost.  

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Art can contribute in more than one way: it can start a personal dialog and reflection as a person makes art, and it can also open up a larger dialog as we engage that art with the larger audience of our peers and community.  Art can help and elaborate on the internal (emotional) and external (socio-political) issues that concern us as the human species.

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Of course there are many social justice issues to consider and they are all inextricably linked.  For example, for our group peer teaching project, my group choose the topic of immigration.  In itself, it is a large complex issue.  This is a part of our larger shared human story.  By exploring our personal relationships to immigration, we can relate to, empathise with and understand the stories of others.  Relating our personal experiences and hearing the deeply personal stories of others help us as people empathise with these issues.  Art absolutely helps with this- it relates us to each other. 

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The term "the personal is the political" came from an article with this title by feminist writer Carol Hanisch encouraging readers to think about personal experiences politically. 

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For my artwork this week I made a photo, printed it and then embroidered over that  photo to highlight and share a personal moment.  The photo is of my daughter helping my husband cooking dinner: